A story of sea-faring adventure including a shipwreck with a daring rescue, a ship fire and a close escape, pirates and enslavement, gold, danger, redemption and a desperate bid for freedom. There is excitement in every chapter in this harrowing tale of the crew and passengers of the Galatea as they voyage from England to Australia and back. (Summary by OliverBoliver) [chương_files]
Powys presents a set of literary devotions of great figures in Literature who have obsessed him. He attempts not so much a reasoned critique or any attempt to categorise these figures but rather, as he describes in the Preface: “to give [himself] up, absolutely and completely, to the various visions and temperaments of these great dead artists.” Powys delivered popular lectures throughout the United States and was able to hold audiences in rapt attention for hours while speaking about great literature and writers, this book from the earlier part of his writing career gives us a little glimpse into what those lectures must have been like. – Summary by Keri Ford [chương_files]
Early in his life Samuel Butler began to carry a note-book and to write down in it anything he wanted to remember; it might be something he heard some one say, more commonly it was something he said himself. In one of these notes he gives a reason for making them: “One’s thoughts fly so fast that one must shoot them; it is no use trying to put salt on their tails.” So he bagged as many as he could hit and preserved them, re-written on loose sheets of paper which constituted a sort of museum stored with the wise, beautiful, and strange creatures that were continually winging their way across the field of his vision. As he became a more expert marksman his collection increased and his museum grew so crowded that he wanted a catalogue. In 1874 he started an index, and this led to his reconsidering the notes, destroying those that he remembered having used in his published books and re-writing the remainder. The re-writing shortened some but it lengthened others and suggested so many new ones that the index was soon of little use and there seemed to be no finality about it. In 1891 he attached the problem afresh and made it a rule to spend an hour every morning re-editing his notes and keeping his index up to date. At his death, in 1902, he left five bound volumes, with the contents dated and indexed, about 225 pages of closely written sermon paper to […]
Alice Meynell was an English essayist, critic, and poet who was also a leading suffragist, serving as vice-president of the Women Writers’ Suffrage League. She and her husband Wilfrid Meynell were active in publishing and editing literary works including helping to launch the first works of Francis Thompson, author of “Hound of Heaven.” This is a collection of her essays covering a wide range of topics from the opening essay on the “Spirit of Place” to a playful essay about the foot, and musing on topics such as rain, the horizon and the concluding essay, “Shadows.” – Summary by Larry Wilson [chương_files]
This Is one of the Hawkins series and a right good one at that! Big boys and little boys, manly and “yellow”, all these figure in the adventures which are recounted and the reader is quite breathless by the time he has taken part even vicariously in the numerous pranks and serious experiences. Good wholesome lessons are taught also as when the bully of the group comes to realize some of the big things of life just before he is called to the larger life beyond this one A real boys book but girls will like It also. (Bookseller and Stationer 1923) Seckatary Hawkins, a fat boy with a cowlick hairdo, records daily minutes of the adventures of a remarkably organized group of boys. The group of ten or so boys (some boys rotated in and out of the club) have their own clubhouse on the river bank, complete with a stove for heat, a telephone, and even an organ for the required singing practice. While never the president of the club, Seckatary Hawkins is clearly the smartest member and the leader. He is regularly called upon by the books’ few adult characters and many of the youthful ones to solve various mysteries and to keep the river bank safe. (Adapted from Wikipedia) [chương_files]
This book is about a 16 year old girls’ detective sleuthing skills and how they help her to solve mysteries. This is the 3rd and final book in this girls’ series. – Summary by April Reynolds [chương_files]
The first part of this volume consists of stories by modern writers dealing mainly with life in our own day. They are, of course, meant for the older children, and both the style and the situations call for more maturity on the part of the reader. The lure of the extraordinary is now dispensed with, and instead these tales supply the interest that comes from recognizable truth to experience. The list of fiction contained in this volume, representing the imaginative product of almost all races and times, is fitly closed by the gift made to the children of England of a story for themselves by the master of English novelists, William Makepeace Thackeray. – Summary by William Patten [chương_files]
In “The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car, Or The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley”, one of the girls has learned to run a big motor car and she invites the club to go on a tour to visit some distant relatives. On the way they stop at a deserted mansion and make a surprising discovery. This is the third book in the “Outdoor Girls” series. (Summary from an old book advertisement) [chương_files]
Bunny Brown and his little sister, Sue, have been having adventures and fun, and getting into scrapes, since the early 1900s. From Chapter One: “Bunny Brown and his sister Sue were at Camp Rest-a-While with their father and their mother. They had come from their home in Bellemere to live for a while in the forest, on the shore of Lake Wanda, where they were all enjoying the life in the open air. They had journeyed to the woods in an automobile, carrying two tents which were set up under the trees. One tent was used to sleep in and the other for a dining room. There was also a place to cook…” This is Volume 6 of the Bunny Brown series. This book contains racial prejudices that were once commonplace. They are retained, as originally written in this recording, because to do otherwise would be to deny they existed. – Summary by Nan Dodge [chương_files]
Endymion is the largest work by John Keats and was composed between April and November 1817. When it was published in April 1818 the critical reception was almost universally hostile. Since that time, many readers have found the poem dense and inaccessible, and have preferred to focus on the occasional gems of poetic commentary for which it has become famous. Feeling that the poem was both undervalued and misunderstood, in 1919 Professor Clement Notcutt published a lengthy essay, which could be considered a “user’s guide” to Endymion. He sums up his intent in the introduction: A careful study of Endymion made some ten years ago led to the conclusion that there was more of allegorical significance in the poem than had hitherto been recognised, but the effort to trace that significance was only partially successful. Further study since that time has gradually opened up the way to the interpretation that is worked out in the following pages. It is probable that there are details in the story the meaning of which still lies hidden, but it may at least be hoped that enough has been discovered to win for the poem its rightful place among the not very numerous examples in English poetry of well-wrought allegory. In 1921 Notcutt published a further essay entitled: The Story of Glaucus in Keat’s Endymion. – Summary by Algy Pug [chương_files]
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